A Sustainable and Comprehensive Framework for Knowledge Transfer in MNCs: An Empirical Examination Based on Country, Company and Individual Levels of Chinese MNCs

Abstract

The shift in business perspective helps test, extend, and build innovative management theory, then sustainably expand and enhance the understanding of business and management. The development of the global business model makes knowledge transfer not only focus on the process itself, but especially the knowledge transfer of multinational companies (MNCs). Thus, this study is based on the knowledge-based view (KBV) theory, using a sustainable perspective and establishing a spatial model, which includes three aspects: county, company, and employee. It has been mentioned many times in previous research that it is necessary to build such a comprehensive model and completely study the influence factors, while this study is the first to carry out an effective empirical way to test which levels have significant factors that impact the knowledge transfer of Chinese MNCs. Moreover, with the advancement of technology, such as video conference and remote online cooperation, whether human abilities and traits (cultural intelligence) still occupy a specific position, as the conclusions of previous studies have proved, is also a focus of this study. Therefore, this empirical study uses the partial least squares structural equation (PLS-SEM) to test the influence of different aspects on knowledge transfer in Chinese MNCs. Although this study just chose Chinese MNCs as the case, the comprehensive results make up and rediscover some tacit factors of the impact on knowledge transfer, and then support further sustainable research.